


The Things We Leave Behind

by Kasan_Soulblade



Category: Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Genre: Backstory for Ravio, Gen, Lorule centric, this may lead to canon, uncertian for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3343481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When things were bad, you looked forward, up, whatever the saying went.</p><p>In Lorule there was no gain. Nothing forward, up, or even down for miles on end.</p><p>In this world of corruption all that was left was a slow decay, but if you were lucky, or set the fall up just right, the pieces could fall together into something usable, coherent. These were his pieces, and because he wasn’t, what they wanted or expected, the push didn’t come from boundless courage and vitality as was his birthright, rather the cornered desperation of waning morality that this life had left him</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flowers, torches, and idle Sheerows

**Author's Note:**

> Because really, Ravio needs some love here, and I really love that little rouge so... I'm giving him some attention here. This might blend into canon, it might not.

The things we leave behind.

 

Flowers, torches, and idle Sheerows

He couldn’t hold a sword to save his life. First attempt –his last- had been a side swipe swing thingie. Fingers gripping wrong way around and too much enthusiasm –and sweat on his bare hands- had caused half of his leggings to be cut off.

As for his leg, well he had quite the scar, the mess had been spectacular, and the medic had given him an earful about playing about with adult things. And where was his mother, his father, shouldn’t he have been watched?

How could he have said it?

That the like-likes had gotten, the gleam of a rupee and opportunity had been-

Or the skulls all about all bewitched but once habited, one of them had snapped –fangs dripping _something-_ and the complications-

There were a hundred deaths in Lorule, tragedy was a matter of pick and choose.

So because he couldn’t decide what to say he’d said nothing. And the weary doctor –the poor old man never got a break people were in day in and day out- had tended him and called him a stout lad though he’d soundlessly cried through the whole thing. He hadn’t wailed, been quiet, so stout had sorta fit and he was declared fit, so all was well.

Still he hobbled about long unlit castle halls on crutches a while. Fit notwithstanding. He wasn’t walking, mainly lurking, and aware, so aware of the many helmeted heads that turned just so when he came by then pointedly looked away. As for him, the first week –the week after, when the glow of newness, of _being in the castle_ and wasn’t that lucky, wasn’t that a break!- had dwindled down to a glimmer of luminescence more remembered then felt he’d been _special_. They watched him because he was _special_ , and because he was special and important like the Lady well… they looked away.

He wouldn’t have minded had they talked to him. His efforts to chat them up himself (because if you wanted to do something weren’t you supposed to do it yourself? He sorta recalled advice like that, who gave it to him was dodgy. Mom? Dad? They’d been gone so long and hadn’t been about much anyways that he wasn’t _sure_ anymore.) fell flat. Something about the castle’s chancy light and the eye slits and angles catching torch light just right and made their edges look like they were burning.

He’d seen houses that light, all aglow and crumbling like that, and the memories of before made his hands go all damp and his eyes dart about and his tongue go all dry that he _couldn’t_.

Talk, much less think.

So he learned other ways about, while his legs were cut up and when they weren’t, so he wouldn’t see the guards and they wouldn’t see him.

And he went quiet, a sort of thinking quiet as he stopped trying, trying to talk, and not trying to quiver under regard that was adverted more often than not and gazes that wouldn’t have met his own if he’d worn a sign that said “look at me!” and hopped up and down.

He’d tried that, one lonely day once upon a time, before witches (that weren’t, they were wizards, and one cheeky comment had left him hanging on the wall until the Princess had found about it) and paintings and magical bracelets that weren’t his but were because finder keepers and all that.

He’d gotten no response then, and the few times he’d been seen after… Well he got no response now. So he walked in silence, down halls that in legends were light soaked, but in legends the grass was green, the sky was blue, and light was common place.

A look out the window and back a ways showed the grass to be a familiar withered brownish yellow; the sky was hazy and grey, like smoke from some far off fire was trying to darken it before night got around to matters.

As for light, he counted three lit torches from his trek from the servant’s quarters to his own on one hand, and came away with two fingers unbent, untallied.

Besides the latest of the torches, his horned helmet glinting (burning, but not yet burned down) the captain of the guard looked upon him, then looked away. One steel sheathed hand smacked against the wooden door, the awful clatter set his heart to hammering.

“Visitor, Majesty, the Rabbit.”

The words, “it’s Ravio,” turned to ash in his mouth as he looked up (and up and up, why was everyone so _tall_ ) to at first consider the steel shrouded face and the fires that were flickering and there and not there and itching to just start.

The frayed dusty carpet just seemed safer to study, so he did, noticing how vibrant the red of his socks popped when contrasting with the violet of his leggings.

Maybe that bit of color would make her smile… He’d tried for flowers (been trying before the guard had rounded him up, shunted him in the servants quarters and set his feet to this route with pointed poking looks from the edges of their eye slits) but hadn’t found any, at least none about the castle or on its grounds, or between home and the castle when the idea had found roost on his head like an errant Sheerow. So he crept forward, through the cracked open door on tip toe, because that’s how timid things crept.

And out of Lorule he was the most timid of them all.


	2. Flight, falls, a broken bottle

Flight, falls, a broken bottle

 

 

Between his house, the five he’d popped into via bracelet of wall melding(stolen from Yuga, though she erherm _he_ didn’t know it yet), and looting the treasury with the use of a pretty please he had a lot of bottles. Twelve to be exact.

That’d been the easy part.

Convincing three fairies to coexist in one bottle, eh, not so much. It took some doing, a bit of judicial shaking to stun the bottles first resident ten shove the new winged creature in, but once you got over the squeals and outraged little first thumps everything was fine.

Also Lorulian fairies were very greedy, just put the bottle near a red rupee and they quieted real nice. Sometimes the rupees went missing in the morning too, and the smiled from those little faces seemed a bit sharp, but he’d just set another down come say a convent nap, or bed, and pay for a little more quiet.

Since this wasn’t his money he didn’t mind and he told himself that they didn’t mind either (they were smiling so sharply after all), so all was well.

Thinking up the sling and a safe way to string it up was tricky. He spent three days in a tree high enough that most monsters couldn’t reach and low enough that if he fell he’d likely not break too much. Once found he’d scaled the violet bark and strung ropes into knots and twists that he’d read in the palace’s library. Blistered happened, so did splinters, all in unspeakable places. Luckily being who he was red potions happened too.

The pay off was… well at first he had the neatest swing ever. Like in Lorulian and Hyrulian history ever. So, because the tree was sturdy (he’d tested it a hundred ways already, with rocks and levers and thing a ma jigs that he might of seen in the library books too, though a few’d been pirated from make believe tales that talked about things like prosperity, whatever that was, and the ground, he’d tested that too) he swung, and squealed, rabbit hood flipping over his eyes and flopping about his neck. _It_ smelled like sweat and sap. _He_ smelled of sweaty sap.

Still it was fun.

And after a bit the monsters learned not to investigate his near hysterical squeals as he pushed and pulled and nearly flew and never fell.

Not that falling would have been bad. A spot of brilliance had taken hold and he’d been snapping up pillows (from those five houses and a few other places) like rupees, if he fell it was going to be soft.

So soft that Sheerow stopped his endless worrying after a long ponderous test hop on each of the pillows. He took of the pillows for nesting while his master made game attempt to fly without wings and watched from his bed of rose hued fluff while his owner swooped about, and if that favored pillow went flying off and landed in Ravio’s house… well neither said anything about it.

Or rather Sheerow didn’t say anything about his master play flying for a day or two longer than he should have and Ravio didn’t tell the princess where her favorite pillow had been spirited off to.

Bottles bound in the places where limbs had been, and their contents shaken to ire so their wings truly thrummed (and the bottles hovered, that was key) he sat in the center of snags and sort of seating, posing heroically (because that’s what you were supposed to do, right?) rabbit hoodie set just so, he cheered “Forward” and had to dodge a bottle to the face. Eleven more followed and he had to use the pillows and seating as a shield.

Suffice to say the first attempt at making a flight worthy nest didn’t go so well.

His second (with more bottles, and less fairies in each bottle got him an inch up… two in the parts he wasn’t sitting on… and disdainful looks from fifteen little glass containers) didn’t go well.

His third came with an unexpected visitor at the end. Rubbing a cheek, glaring at a particular glass bottle that had gotten him upside the head twice and left him with one eye that was surly swelling shut mask and hood notwithstanding, he spun about, startled from thoughts of petty revenge at the sound of laughter.

Having picked this clearing (near enough to the castle he could snap up the more important of his work and run in in a monster came yet far enough that unless the people on the walls looked just right they’d likely see nothing) for reasons, there should have been no one to laugh.  But there was, and the hood and flowing drab dust colored robes did nothing to hide the fact that whoever it was was a girl.

A girl who really really shouldn’t have been out here.

“Your… ummm…” They weren’t in the castle, there weren’t guards and… well she’d asked once, the first and only time they’d ever been alone without that creeper Yuga lurking about. Though lame and a bit flat (and stuffy sounding, darkness curse the swelling) he managed a wheezy “Hi.”

Though sparse his greeting neatly sidestepped so many issues.

Well except for tone but considering he’d nearly been beaten to death by a fairy in a bottle that was…trying… so.. hard to…

A sharp shake dazed the thing and it stopped trying to fly out of his hands and get at his face.

Dazed fairy in one hand, well tucked under his arm, he couldn’t bow, technically he was armed… wasn’t he supposed to put his weapons down, but those fairies recovered Din quick and…

And well princess weren’t supposed to be giggling like they were being tickled, so he figured if his formality was off well so was hers.

And she had such a pretty laugh.

“Whatever are you doing?”

Clearly the giggles were on the decline. And so were his brains, which had merrily taken leave of his head and left him all but hugging the bottle of homicidal winged humanoid amongst a mess of lines and knots that only the bards would know.

Or maybe a sailor.

If Lorule had any seas that was, but he’d read that there had been seas and sailors came with them, so it sort of fit.

Scuffing a boot along grey and brown grass Ravio said nothing and in his silence she approached, a soothing pats on a few of the more hostile humming bottles set their hovering to right (or rather to off) and she winded about his work like an off colored angel, or Poe.

There were no angels in Lorule, the Goddess had packed all of those up when they left taking hope and light and… all those little blessings like green grass and regular meals with them.

So Poe it was.

And if thinking of someone living as a thing that was dead (and malicious, and lingering and rotting besides) was a cruel thing. Or wrong, or unsettling… well they didn’t know Lorule.

In this place the dead had it off better than the living in so many ways. They didn’t hunger, they didn’t long, and they didn’t remember hope.

It was the living, who held onto the ghosts of what was more than the ghosts themselves that had it rough. Still, the living weren’t completely on the bad end of the deal, they could touch, as the Princes who really shouldn’t of been outside the castle was touching a rather tricky knot that’d nearly taken a finger when he’d tied it. She looked to him, (hiding hood not hiding her face very well, her chin was too pale, the point too firm and a mark of royalty though she’d never know it, he might of suggested a mask but the lack of perfection made her disguise… something… and he felt that something lost if it were perfect) maybe his hand, then back to it and set it down.

“Whatever is all this?”

Her tone was warm, amused, the sparkle of her eyes hinting that maybe Lorule still had a bit of its triforce of wisdom lurking in the back alley of her blood. Just a shard, a small one, somewhere where it would be safe and safe for her to have.

Licking his lips,

-glad his mask was perfect so she couldn’t see-

he tasted sale and swelling and a bit of blood. His voice was stuffy and a bit horse from yelling

-mainly “stopit” as fast and loud as he could, there’d also been some swears here and there-

He said the first thing that popped into his head. Proving beyond a doubt he was not the triforce of wisdom’s bearer and never was going to be.

“It’s… ah.. for you?”

She tipped her head, letting spill some violet hair and made the hood a joke of her attempts to be secretive as she searched his face and seemed thwarted by his goggle eyed rabbit’s mask.

“A gift?”

She’d surly had those before the other outer Kingdoms had fallen through the cracks of the world? In her youngest days those given to her had been state affairs to mark important days, he was young enough to recall the parties the commoners had thrown for them and for her and simply just because Lorule _didn’t_ throw parties and they were going to do so anyway. Someone, possibly the elder, had said that those were the reasons the people of the now Thieves Town were so ripe for the picking, that silly stupid silly impulse that they acted on.

 _They_ hadn’t had a name for it (besides stupid and crueler crasser things) and _she’d_ never called it anything. Because she was the smartest person in the Kingdom and she hadn’t called it anything… well he didn’t even try.

A gift she called it… her hands lingered over his efforts, their motion slower, more tender now as she traced line to line trying to maybe pull words from the tangles like a Sage of old… well it was a gift then. Red eyes flicked to him, the look was like a poke and he babbled the first thing in his head.

“A… well it’s a carriage… sort of. It’s supposed to fly.” A venomous hiss from about his arm had him shake the captured bottle guaranteeing him a few less bruises at least. “Except… well it doesn’t. Fly that is.”

Pointedly ignoring the gargled “Revenge will be mine” from the glass he shook the bottle once more maybe not ignoring it so much. She didn’t giggle but she didn’t scold, simply looked and noted and moved on. She was circling the seat now, slower than slow, not quite touching the mess of knots that were sort of smoothed out and meant for someone’s rear.

“It’s ah… a work in progress?”

She sat on his work in progress, winced as something poke wrong ways about, and shifted to a less bumpy patch. Though dust colored Ravio’d bet his favorite scarf that the stuff she was shrouded in was… well not silk, but worth more than all his clothes. Still she had sat, and he thought he was supposed to do so too and he wanted to anyway, so he sat too.

“It needs a few pillows in places.”

To that criticism he smiled though she couldn’t see it.

“I’ll try to scrounge some up.”

He was not thinking of that one pillow all frilly and pink with a Sheerow sitting on it, nesting on it actually.

Really he wasn’t.

Silence lingered, the quiet one might hear monsters about if one strained their ears, except this close to the castle it was well not unlikely, simply less likely. So he listened for monsters while she waited for something.

Finally, sure that monsters weren’t about and he might dare to talk a little Ravio opened his mouth and telling himself there were no guards about managed a few words.

“I thought princesses stayed in castles.”

She winced and bristled and though red the gleam in her eyes went cold, snow Death Mountain cold.

“I thought heroes went on quests.”

Reaching up, twiddling a floppy ear that was and wasn’t his Ravio considered saying something, even as that cold look went away and shame warmed her cheeks. Finally when she opened her mouth –to do whatever, he didn’t care- he spoke first, and loudest, her surprise at being talked over silencing her as surely as a shout.

“Well luckily there aren’t any princess about here, aren’t we, or heroes, those are so boring.” Ravio faked a yawn, one so bad that Sheerow would have bopped his beak into the wall to make it stop.

Silence again, as she set her gaze to lingering over lines and contours of his mask, she needn’t wonder what he looked like under it, she’d seen him without it a few times by now, still she was puzzling something out. Finally, in a tone that didn’t quite believe itself or its words, she said:

“We are lucky, princess and heroes are quite tiresome.”

“Yep.” A whimpered “ _Revenge_ ” got him shaking the bottle, but by then she didn’t seem to see him doing that anymore. “Don’t know any of those, do you?”

Again, in that tone of not quiet believing it herself but saying it anyway. “No, I don’t.”

“We’re very lucky.” Really he was just shaking the bottle to do something at this point. “Boredoms boring.” He advised wisely. “You want to avoid boredom. Because it’s umm… boring…”

Really, if the goddess had left a triforce of stupid about he was likely to have inherited it, or been gifted it, or perhaps it was in the mail at his home just waiting for him to pick it up. Granted he’d only read about mail, no one would be crazy enough to write something down then walk it to someone else’s place to give it to them. Why not just say it? Speaking of stupid the bottle’s insides sounded squishy, a glance down, and both were looking sort of horrified at the red stuff that wasn’t raspberry.

And for the record Lorule had raspberries, and jam, and the stuff in the jar wasn’t either or.

“Ummm…”

A sort of shake, a more to see what was in the bottle than to stop it from hitting him sort of thing. A wing was sticking out of the… mess… it wasn’t glowing anymore. Luckily that’s all he could make out. Firmly setting it down and away (a bit behind so she’d stop looking at it) Ravio tried a smile and wince and she only saw one of the two because… well masks.

And the princess who wasn’t supposed to be out was standing and looking a mite green besides and the hero who was supposed to be questing was thinking about home, and his bed, and hiding under said bed for the rest of his life because really… what type of hero… what type of _person_ squished a _healing fairy_?

“Well…” Could princess’ puke? Ravio was wondering if he was going to find out first hand. She swallowed and there were fourteen bottle occupants just staring at him with wide wild eyes and a hushed meeping that sounded like “will we be next?” but without the words. “If I ah… see any princess or umm guards I’ll let them know you have a gift for them. For the castle?”

“Sounds good.”

Honestly, he sounded almost as sick as she did right then. Sitting amongst tangles and knots he stared at the thing and the glowing bottles all about, then after a moment approached the first, ignoring the terrified whimpers as he picked it up.

When the guards came they found a clearing sprinkled with so much fairy dust it glowed, a rainbow with colors never meant to be in such, the familiar rabbit hooded youth amongst the fey colored illumination said nothing. Only sat by a mess of rope all about.

“You, boy!”

The hood tipped up, ears flopping listlessly to one side as the tip wasn’t quite straight or proper. The boy was a study of poor posture, slumping and looking up, it made the armored man’s ache in something like sympathy.

“The Princess said she had a gift here.”

The tone said clearly it better not be _you_ but Ravio didn’t care what the tone said, simply stood and started gathering empty bottles.

“Boy!”

Again, that look, bad spine in the making and all, and silence. And a gesture, to knotted mess in clearing’s center.

“She wants that.”

Duty done Ravio started the long walk home, leaving gift and one broken red smeared bottle behind and a guard unsure as to which he was to pick up.


End file.
